Become immune to the cost-of-living crisis through property
Become financially free through property
So, you’re stuck renting and the rapidly rising cost of living is eroding your savings or preventing you from saving at all. Could property be the answer?
When starting out on their property journey most people don’t have their own capital to finance their journey and while no money down is an option it requires you to know the right people and be part of the right networks. If you’re right at the beginning with no cash, no network, no knowledge and no experience how do you start? But you do have a passion and eagerness to learn?
Is it as realistic as people say? There are many people out there who will tell you to network and JV, do no money down deals and that is definitely one route you could try and take but not everyone has the network, the confidence or the desire to work with others like that in the beginning. What about those who want to cut their teeth in the industry first, can they succeed too?
The simple answer is yes, but like all good things it will require time, effort and an open mind a willingness to make sacrifices. As the saying goes every overnight success was 20 years in the making. I believe you should take a long-term view and spend the next couple of years getting to where you want to be. To be clear property is not a get rich quick scheme. You don’t have to do it all alone, you have the opportunity to leverage the success of others and cut your learning curve down, use what others know, learn from their mistakes and implement it.
Make a plan know where you are going and where you want to go.
Educate yourself. Utilise free resources like you tube and social media groups and pages, go to free discovery days immerse yourself in property. Spend a little money, buy books that can help you achieve your goals. What books? Ask the social media groups you are now in for recommendations, find recommendations on YouTube from the people you’re subscribed to or even ask Google.
You’ve started to solve your lack of knowledge and started to grow your property network. Let’s work on your cashflow and build your experience and expertise next.
You can begin deal sourcing with no capital. Find as many deals as you can. Work in the evenings put in the leg work. Get to know the people you are sourcing deals for, get to know the people you can source deals from and most importantly get to know what makes a good deal. Doing this alongside your day job will let you save all the money you make from your deal sourcing and let you get to know the people that will help you as you progress through your property journey. Theres no limit on how many deals you can negotiate at a time. There are some who have made deal sourcing one of their main property strategies. Obviously, everything take time but once you have the contacts and are getting a steady good flow of deals you could be making between £1,000 and £10,000 per deal. This strategy will improve your network and introduce you to investors and people who can help with the other strategies.
Once you have enough you could start R2x (SA, HMO, rent) using your deal sourcing payments for your initial funding. As a good deal sourcer you might possibly get your first R2x deals from some of the investors you’ve found deals for. Giving them regular cash flow and making money yourself in the process, also proving yourself as a good property investor.
Now you have a growing cash flow, a growing network and you are gaining experience. You could start leveraging these things to find your own deals and flip them. This will add to your network and power team, as you’ll have to work closely with brokers, solicitor, and contractors to get the projects done. If you are on good terms with the investors that you have deal sourced for you might find them open to a JV with you for flipping if they know like and trust you and you have a good reputation for doing what you said you would do when you said you would do it.
A flip could take you 6 months, a year maybe but the return could be significant. Each flip could be the deposit you need to obtain a BTL property which increases your monthly cash flow. And now you can start growing your portfolio of buy to lets.
Once you get to this stage in your journey you should already have a good understanding of the property business. And you should have learnt about company structure and know if you should be operating as a sole trader, LLP or LTD Co. and you can find out all that information on your property journey the same way you started your property journey, with free resources like YouTube and by asking people in your network, as your network grows so too will your knowledge.
Now you can start to scale your business and increase your assets and your cash flow taking on bigger and better deals until you do your first commercial conversion which could be 5 units, maybe 10 but the main point is you already have all the contacts, experience and expertise in place to do this successfully. You’ll still be learning a lot with each project as we all do, no one knows it all and we don’t know what we don’t know, but you will know a lot more than you do now.
So, congratulations you have a growing diverse portfolio with good cash flow, and you can do more of what you enjoyed doing and scale back on the strategies you felt didn’t fit you as an individual. Now you are free invest in others and help them on their journey if you want to, you are free to re-invest in your own portfolio and keep growing it, you are free to live the life you choose and with the freedom that a good cash flowing business can give you.
Don’t get me wrong this approach would be a lot of hard work and long days but if you have the appetite for it anyone can make it work. You could speed any of these processes up by introducing JV finance, having a mentor, utilising money from friends or family, but as I said at the start if you don’t have access to any of these funding options that’s how I would grow my knowledge and experience to get into property with just my own cash. Although you might feel like you’re starting on your own, but property is not a solo game you need good people around you and as you grow and learn you’ll find them or be introduced to them.
In a few years with the right work, you could find yourself financially free and immune to the cost-of-living crisis or any other future financial crisis through property. Be busy but don’t be a busy fool, have a plan, a purpose and a direction.
If you would like to discuss your specific situation, please contact me I will happily share with you my property development journey.